2. The Campaign
In June of 2014, 3 months after the film was announced and 6
months before it would finally be released, The Guardian reported
that the film was making a stir in the North Korean government.
3. #Viral
KCNA, the state news agency in North Korea, promised that the country
would hit back with ‘stern and merciless’ retaliation if the film was
released, calling it the ‘most blatant act of terrorism and war’ with all the
level-headed calm we’ve come to expect from the country.
In the months that followed, prominent North Korean politicians publicly
lambasted the film, and the KCNA asked President Obama if the film
could be pulled.
The uncertainty over the films release resulted in missing posters and
adverts. Hearing about the interview became mainstream press.
5. The Movie
• The campaign and movie are both centered
on the Turing test; whether a human can
distinguish a machine from another human.
Trailer
6. What they did
• The Marketing team of Ex
Machina created a Tinder
bot of Ava - the humanoid
AI from the movie. They
used pictures of the
actress, Alicia Vikander,
and set her up as a 25-year
old woman.
• Those that matched with
her would be asked a
series of deep questions,
including Have you ever
been in love? and What
makes you human?. The
men, hopeful to get
‘intimate’, were instead
directed to an Instagram
profile for the movie.
7. Reaction
• The campaign received some negative press as
it was seen as trickery. However, it’s cheap
marketing and drew a lot attention to the
movie. This is because most of the men
couldn’t spot the fake character, probably due
to their ‘blind sight’
14. What is it about?
• Based off the Assassins Creed game series,
turned into a film with a similar storyline.
• The protagonist, played by Michael
Fassbender, is looking into his ancestors past
and can go back in time and become his
assassin ancestors.
15. Posters
• They used posters to promote Assassins Creed’s release by selling
individual posters and also paying for advertisement space on the side of
Stagecoach buses in the UK.
16. Trailers
• 20th Century Fox released several trailers for
Assassin’s Creed.
• Some of them:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTtP1J
nJ_E
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4haJD6
W136c
17. Stunts
• Assassins Creed was given a lot of attention
from the press and film critics because one of
the iconic features of Assassins Creed is a
skyfall jump from over 100 feet.
• In Assassins Creed movie it was filmed for real
at 125 feet, it got press coverage for being one
of the riskiest stunt jumps in any film.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAEm8gR
yqcc
20. • Sound of My Voice is a 2011 American
psychological thriller directed by Zal
Batmanglij and starring Christopher Denham,
Nicole Vicius and Brit Marling.
• The plot focuses on two documentary
filmmakers who attempt to expose a cult led
by a charismatic leader who claims to be from
the future.
• Premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
and was released by Fox Searchlight Pictures
on 27th April 2012
21. • The viral campaign consisted of a website
featuring the first 12 minutes of the film as a
teaser. From this the video offered links to a
variety of viral sites tied to the cult at the
center of the film. One of the pages makes
mention of regular meetings at LA’s Ukrainian
Cultural Center at 4315 Melrose Avenue every
Thursday night at 7pm
22. • Interested fans visited the real location at the
set times to find that not only did staged
meetings take place, but the actors of the film
would appear and play as their characters.
• This happened every Thursday from the first
teaser trailer until the release of the movie.
23. • The movie had a YouTube channel called
4twentyseven2012 (the films release date)
which featured videos by the cult inviting fans
to visit the previously mentioned meetings.
• https://youtu.be/FRULNCK27bY?t=1m21s
25. ‘Missing’ Posters
• During the build-up to the
release of The Blair Witch
Project, posters and leaflets
were handed in Cannes,
Maryland. They showed
that three college students
had gone missing while
filming a documentary in a
forest nearby. In relation to
this, all three actors were
listed as ‘missing presumed
dead’ on IMDb leading up
to the release in 1999.
26. Trailers and Website
• There was a website created
about the legend of the Blair
Witch, including all history and
sightings from 1785 onward.
They then posted ‘found
footage’ from the film itself
and depicted it to all be real
found footage. There are many
photos of the filmmakers both
during and before production,
and there is an entire page
dedicated to each of the three
students including diary
entries and video diaries
during the production.
• During 1999 a lot of snippets
of trailers were released as if
they were being posted by
whoever had kidnapped the
students. These trailers were
posted on a Sci-Fi network for
college students only, this
saved money by avoiding the
mainstream cinemas and lead
the audience to believe they’d
stumbled upon something
special.
27. Attention to Detail
• On top of the previous methods they also constantly
carried out additional pieces of ‘detective work’ to
make it seem all the more realistic. All the families
were interviewed about the so-called
disappearances, crime scene photos were created,
and there was even an alleged autopsy carried out
on a body found nearby in order to make out that
one of the students may have been found.
